To borrow some language from the Book of Psalms in my article on television shows, the shows Succession and Ted Lasso seem to differ as far as east is from west. But in their final seasons, these acclaimed series have met at a north pole. And I’m hoping to figure out the why and the how of it all.
Starting with the season three premiere of Ted Lasso, we find Rebecca visiting Keeley in the offices of her new PR firm. Keeley reveals that she got an incredible deal on the new workspace because the previous boss sexually harassed his employees.
“One man’s grope is another woman’s gain,” Rebecca quips tall-ly.
Keeley then demonstrates her personal office’s ability to obscure the glass panel that separates her from her employees at the push of a button. Rebecca is impressed, but this soon turns to confusion as Keeley bursts into tears.
“I’ve been so busy I literally have to make time in my schedule to sit at my desk and cry,” Keeley says. “And now I’ve double booked you.”
Now let’s skip ahead to Succession’s season four episode “Living+.” Here we find Shiv stepping out of a business meeting. Her assistant leads her into an empty conference room they’ve reserved. It’s oddly dark and lacking anyone to, well, meet.
Shiv sets a timer on her phone. She begins to tear up but is suddenly interrupted by her husband, Tom. The two are going through a divorce, but Tom senses something off with Shiv.
“I have found that I am too busy, what with my [recently deceased] dad. And so [my assistant] has sometimes found me somewhere so that I can have a moment to cry,” Shiv explains.
“You’re scheduling your grief?” Tom asks.
Now there is clearly some obvious overlap here, but it goes deeper.
At these moments in both shows, Shiv and Keeley are in the midst of major potential advancements in their careers. Keeley is running a new company. Shiv, after the death of their father, is jockeying with her brothers in hopes to lead the family company through a multibillion-dollar buyout. A buyout only she seems eager to pursue.
They are also both experiencing breakups. Keeley and Roy Kent end the episode by announcing their separation to Kent’s young niece. Shiv is navigating a divorce, although as the episode continues we see that that romance might be rekindled on better terms.
To dig down even further, both scenes touch on death. Shiv’s scheduled mourning is the result of her business maneuvers interfering with the process of properly grieving the death of her father. The Ted Lasso scene introduces Keeley’s CFO, who chastises her for including a weekly flower order as a business expense “so the office is cheerful and smells nice.”
The CFO nips this idea in the bud, saying, “Flowers are for two things… Dead people and dead marriages.”
The connections to the Succession scene should be obvious.
Another connection is the inclusion of sexuality in both scenes. After Keeley’s cry, we see Rebecca celebrate crying, describing it as an orgasm for the soul. In Succession, the scene concludes with Tom embracing Shiv — much like Rebecca embraces a tearful Keeley — except Tom and Shiv then proceed with a bit of sex.
So in these two very disparate shows that simultaneously dominated the Emmys, we arrive at scheduled office-place crying scenes that delve into sex, corporate politics, romantic dissolution, and death.
The question arises: Is this a coincidence?
I find that a bit too unlikely. There is too much overlap. Too much connective tissue.
I’m not alleging any sort of plagiarism or anything of the like. I have a different idea. But first I want to address something.
It is significant that the main characters in both these scenes are career-driven women struggling to sustain a life outside of work. This goes back to the whole “you can have it all” conceit employed most bluntly in 30 Rock.
But that concept was focused on women being forced to choose between career or (broadly) motherhood and a traditional domestic life. What we see in these two scenes seems new. And maybe worse. At least equally as bad.
In these two scenes, we have a total convergence of the intimate, the tragic, the erotic, and the mundane for these women. I’ve sold my time for money, so now I have to use my workspace as an intimate arena. It’s continuously invaded by those I know personally, but also on a professional level.
I hate to say it. But this is a symptom of post-pandemic storytelling.
For many, your home became your office while the world dealt with devastating amounts of personal loss. You were separated from those you knew casually and confined with those who knew you best. Grieving became regular, but you also had a bunch of video calls to hop on.
There was no sitting in your car and screaming or crying before joining the traffic on your way back home. Everything was compressed and every outside interaction was something to be scheduled on a device.
Also, as folks are returning to the traditional workplace, they are faced with dealing with the losses, both romantic and fatal, that occurred during the pandemic. Again, everything is condensed. You’re either relegated to your home office or the office is once again your home.
And despite the discrepancy in how the current seasons of Ted Lasso and Succession are being reviewed by critics and audiences, the divide isn’t the separation between east and west. Instead we see that if you walk north far enough, you’ll eventually start heading south. Or vice versa. And it’s at this point where these shows meet.
